The Girl Who Saw Ghosts

 Elara always saw them. Figures lingering in hallways, pressed too close to windows, standing at the edge of her bed. Their faces were pale and swollen, mouths sagging like they’d been left to rot in water.

They never spoke—only stared. At first, she thought everyone could see them, but the older she got, the more she realized it was only her. When she tried to point them out, her parents’ eyes widened, and their voices tightened with fear. “Don’t say things like that, Elara. Don’t look at them.” But she couldn’t help it. They were everywhere. One night, she followed a boy who waved to her from the end of the street. He was barefoot, skin grayish-blue, with dark veins winding up his arms. He smiled, but his teeth were broken, as if smashed against concrete. He led her into the woods. The deeper they went, the darker it became, until the trees seemed to twist together, choking out the sky. The boy’s shape flickered ahead of her like bad reception on a TV. “Elara,” he whispered in a voice too deep for a child. “Don’t you remember?” Her breath caught. “Remember what?”

The boy turned, and his face was wrong now—split open across the cheek, his jaw dangling by sinew. He stepped closer. “You’re one of us.” She stumbled back and bolted, branches tearing her skin, lungs burning. When she reached her house, she slammed through the front door, screaming for her parents. But the house wasn’t hers anymore. The wallpaper peeled like rotting skin, the smell of mildew and earth thick in the air. The furniture was covered in sheets stiff with mold. And on the walls, written in jagged black scratches, was her name. Over and over again.

Elara ran upstairs, sobbing. Her bedroom door creaked open by itself, revealing the stripped and empty room. On the floor was a broken picture frame. Inside the shattered glass was a newspaper clipping: “Local Family Dies in Car Crash – Daughter’s Body Never Found.” Her stomach turned to ice. Memories flashed—screeching tires, glass exploding, the wet, tearing pain as her skull hit the dashboard. She backed away, shaking her head violently. “No… no, I’m not—”

A cold hand wrapped around her wrist. Her parents stood in the hall, but their faces were caved-in, bloodless, dripping mud as though they had crawled out of graves. Their eyes were hollow sockets crawling with something that wriggled. “Elara,” her mother rasped, voice bubbling with rot. “Stop pretending. You’ve been with us all along.”

The boy appeared behind them, his broken jaw gaping too wide, and dozens of pale hands reached out from the walls, clutching at her, pulling her. The house groaned and shuddered like a living thing, its walls pulsing with veins, the floorboards slick with blood. Her parents leaned closer, their voices a chorus of whispers. “Welcome home, Elara. Forever.” And as the shadows closed in, Elara finally screamed—though she no longer had a voice